I'm not usually a nickname kind of person, but these particular nicknames could also work in Chinese, which is something we're looking for since we live in China and are trying to find ways to connect the "English" name to the Chinese name.

Question 2) Are some of these 'L' intensive names (like Lionel, Leolin, or perhaps Leland-- two 'L's in each name) too much 'L' when combined with our last name (Luckie)? What about some of the less intensive 'L' names (like Leo, Leopold, Leonidas, etc), would they be okay with Luckie as a last name, or is it still too 'L' intensive to you?

Last edited by javad; May 13th, 2013 at 11:01 PM.
Reason: Simplifying my expression so more people will respond

Which character would you be using for Finn? I'm not really a fan of putting an L name with Luckie... Man, this was a bit difficult. Would you just use a 1 character Chinese name, then? I generally think it's harder to go from Chinese to English. If you have an English name, you can normally come up with something that sounds at least a little similar...

@tf- Thanks for putting together that list! It's been copy and pasted for further reflection.
As far as the character we'd be using for Finn, I'm not sure exactly which one we'd choose, but it'd be one of the ones with the pinyin of 'fen' (a bit of a different sound to Finn, but pretty close). I'm not very good at Chinese names myself (never know what sounds good to a Chinese ear), but my wife said there are some 'fen' characters that could work pretty well in a Chinese name. Also, we're not necessarily gonna go with a one character name (though one, two or three would also be fine with us), but since it's so hard to find a full two-three syllable "English" name that works straight across with the Chinese language (like we were able to find with our first son, Rayhan 瑞晗), we thought if we have one syllable/character that shares the same sound (like 'liu'/Leo), it'd be another way of connecting the "English" name to the Chinese name (then he could have a shared NN (like 'Leo') to English and to Chinese speakers)

Hmmm... Yes, I don't envy you on this one. It's quite difficult to find names that work in both languages. I also have no idea what sounds good to the Chinese, so good luck! I'm interested to see what you'll come up with that will sound good to both of you.

INTJ Anthropologist Living in the centre of China, married to a Persian, and just enjoying a completely unpredictable life

And just for fun, some Elvish names from J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology. I realized, when thinking about Finn, that the "fin" element was used a good deal by the Elves, particularly those of the First Age:

Beaulieu (prn. BEW-ley, this is an English surname and place name derived from the French beau lieu, "beautiful place." Unfortunately, the first thing I found when I Googled "Beaulieu" was Beaulieu carpet. Didn't know such a thing existed...)
Beaumont ("beautiful mountain")Beauregard (We actually have a young councilman in our neighboring town named Beauregard, nn Beau.)Boaz
Bodil (Norwegian, "commanding.")Bogdan/Bohdan
Bonaparte (!)
Bonar (Scottish, from Old French, "gentle." I have seen it as a surname.)Bowman/Boman (Bowman is an English word name, "bowman"; Boman is Persian (?), meaning "great mind." Rereading your original post, I see you already have Boman on your list.)

As always, best wishes, and thanks for sharing the continuing challenge! Maybe it'll be a girl, and all your troubles will be over

Last edited by auroradawn; May 14th, 2013 at 04:05 PM.

"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names."
Psalm 147:4